RUMOR - Biden to announce cancellation of student debt

[Belsnickel]

(08-24-2022, 11:49 AM)Dill Wrote: The issue here is really how we, as a nation, conceive of the "Public Good."

If you went to a public university, you probably paid a greatly increased tuition, compared to students of the 50s and 60s,
because thousands of Republicans in your state were asking "why should I pay someone else's tuition?" And at least SOME of 
the cost of your degree was paid by "someone else." 

One of the primary goals behind the creation of public higher ed in the 19th century was not "profit," but to advance a state's economy.
So education was considered a public good, like roads, for which everyone could be taxed. Some would benefit more,
but EVERYONE would receive some benefit. E.g., someone who never used public roads would still benefit from lower
costs in moving goods and the like. I don't know what you got your degree in, but it's not a stretch to view that as creating a
value for others in your state as well. By design, then, some of the extra wealth your degree generated would go back to helping
give others the same chance (i.e., if you went to a public university).

A state full of engineers and knowledgeable agriculturalists would benefit everyone in the state, and the nation. Hence, e.g., the Morrill Act of 1862 which granted public lands to states for the creation of public universities, which charged less than private in order to create access for white middle class families. This was, of course, a "progressive" view. States and counties which did NOT much prize this notion of public good became national backwaters, especially in the South, and especially in areas where slavery was most intensively practiced, and which remain today the most hostile towards any supposed taxation for public good.

Get that Jeffersonian nonsense out of here!